MSNBC: McConnell Saying Obama Wants To Be In PGA Is Racist

Lawrence O'Donnell reacts to an excerpt from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's speech tonight at the RNC where he is expected to say President Obama is working to earn a spot on the PGA tour.

"For four years, Barack Obama has been running from the nation's problems. He hasn't been working to earn reelection. He's been working to earn a spot on the PGA tour," McConnell is expected to say.

O'Donnell says there is racial undertones in McConnell's assertion.

"There are many, many, many rhetorical choices you can make at any point in any speech to make whatever point up want to make," MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell said. "If he wanted to make the point that you just suggested and I think he does want to make that point, they had a menu of a minimum of ten different kinds of images that they could have raised. And I promise you, the speech writers went through rejecting three or four before they land order that one. That's the one they want for a very deliberate reason. That -- there's -- these people reach for every single possible racial double entendre they can find in every one of these speeches."

"I know these people are insensitive. I know these speech writers. I know the way they work. They do not have the same sensitivity level that other speech writers do. But when you get to the Tiger Woods reference, there were people in the speech writing room, I know this, without a shadow of a doubt, who said, 'Wait a minute, do we really want to go there? Do we really want to go to Tiger Woods and the vote and the room was yes, we do.' And Mitch McConnell agreed to do it," O'Donnell said.